'The Mummy' Star Sofia Boutella Reveals Her Bloody On-Set Injury

Being a Mummy is hazardous to your health. Just ask Sofia Boutella, who plays the titular monster in The Mummy, the inaugural entry in Universal’s new “Dark Universe” franchise that will tie creature feature legends such as the Invisible Man (Johnny Depp), Frankenstein’s monster (Javier Bardem), and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (both played by Russell Crowe) into the same world. Back in the Ancient Egyptian era of this Dark Universe, Princess Ahmanet (Boutella) strikes a bargain with the god Set that grants her otherworldly powers, but ends up being mummified — while still alive — before she can wreak havoc. It’s only centuries later, when her tomb is unearthed by adventurer Nick Morton (Tom Cruise) in modern times, that she’s able to fully flex her Mummy muscles. According to Boutella, the mummification process wasn’t pleasant for Ahmanet or for her. “On one take,” she tells Yahoo Movies in the video above, “the lid [of the sarcophagus] tilted inside and it hit my nose. [In the scene] I’m still paralyzed and I still can’t talk. So I screamed internally as much as I could.”

After suffering in silence until the take was over, Boutella was allowed to sit up and remove her mummified headpiece. And, at that point, the proverbial dam burst. “Blood just was streaming out of my nose,” she says, chuckling. “It was the Niagara Falls of blood. Not fun!” Nevertheless, Boutella persisted despite her injury. “We kept filming and my nose was fine. I could have lost it that day.”